The Axiological Context of Childhood

The article undertakes the issue of universal values in the process of child development. The text is intended to demonstrate that during childhood children realize those values in the course of a natural development of their personalities. Consequently, we might argue that in addition to its "instrumental" meaning (involving preparation for adult life), childhood has a value in itself, like any other, unique period of human life. Therefore, "being a child" is not a state barely derivative from adulthood, an undeveloped form of life, but it is a perfectly complete state within the reality of children’s world and the ways in which the child experiences it. The article also aims at emphasizing the need to treat children as in a subjective way as agents and co-creators of their own childhood